Saturday, June 23, 2012

Power Spaces

What in the world is a Power Space?

A Powerspace was this week's focus at Weight Watchers. A power space is an environment that supports your weight loss efforts. It is critical to one's weight loss. "You can't eat it if you don't have it," is the quote from last week's meeting that stuck with me.

Let me give you an example.

Last weekend we went to my mother's home. My mom is the best cook. Not the healthiest cook, but one of the best! In fact, I have teased her that the reason I got cancer was because of her fried cooking. The minute I walked into her house, something jabbed me in the gut. She had a box of sugar cookies and a chocolate cake sitting out on the stove. Right in plain site! The milk in her fridge is 2%, the bread on her counter is white and not the low calorie, high fiber bread I need.

{Her kitchen was not a power space!}

Thankfully, I left her home without eating any of the sweets and managed to be down on the scale.

But that visit got me looking at my own kitchen/pantry.

I am sad to say I bagged up an entire Trader Joe's grocery sack full of things that could easily sabotage a person's weight loss efforts. I had candy bars left over from Christmas. Miss Medical Student brought us some candy from Norway and it was in the pantry: open and half eaten. There was gummy bears from last summer. Peeps from this past Easter. Oh, and we have not even started on the salty treats!

I purged. And I have to tell you how good it feels to get that food out of my house! But, if I am honest, my home was not the only place I had to clean out. I had a bag of oreo's at work. As well as some candy. Oh, yeah, and I found some sweets in my car. {I am not owning those, they belonged to the kids, but they were still there!}

I think it is important to your weight loss efforts to live in a power space. When you get home late, with nothing planned for dinner, you end up mindlessly eating whatever you can find. I still do that. But now I have to snack on crunchy veggies that are prepped and ready in the fridge.

When I think about power spaces and how necessary they are to weight loss I then think of just how important they can be to every struggle we might face. When changing behaviors, it is critical to surround ourselves with the best possible options in order to succeed.

Good job!!! I have a Powerspace at my home and work but my struggle is keeping the Powerspace in tact. The boy and I have a mean sweet tooth and he's always wanting something for dessert. Sometimes I say no, but other times I find myself saying yes, justifying it that I'm making it for "him" - knowing I am bound to get into it. That's my struggle.

I need to strengthen my resistance muscle... just make some every now and then and don't enduldge when they're around! Enjoy one, slowly, then go back to healthy foods. I certainly can't deprive myself of stuff I crave... that's when I've really blown it. But when I think things through, come to my senses, I end up making smarter choices that make me proud later on!